This 3 punisher list I went against with 4 Skulls today in No Glory format. Despite my best efforts to flank and skirt it just couldn't approach. It was just like an auto win for my opponent.

Trajectory Simulator just seems so NPE. No skill really needed. Point. Project. If the targets turn away to kite or avoid the punishers hit them with ordnance. It essentially discourages the game to be played. How is this good for the game? Ugh.

I know this is just unnecessary venting. But yeah, it seems FFG didn't learn from 1.0 mistakes here. I know it's here to stay but I just have zero fun playing against something like that. Anyways, here is the list;

Cutlass Squadron Pilot (36)
Trajectory Simulator (3)
Proton Torpedoes (9)
Barrage Rockets (6)
Proton Bombs (5)
Seismic Charges (3)
Ablative Plating (4)

Cutlass Squadron Pilot (36)
Trajectory Simulator (3)
Proton Torpedoes (9)
Barrage Rockets (6)
Proton Bombs (5)
Seismic Charges (3)
Ablative Plating (4)

Cutlass Squadron Pilot (36)
Trajectory Simulator (3)
Proton Torpedoes (9)
Barrage Rockets (6)
Proton Bombs (5)
Seismic Charges (3)
Ablative Plating (4)

Total: 198

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0

Trajectory simulator shouldn't have made it into 2.0

1 hour ago, freakyg3 said:

Trajectory simulator shouldn't have made it into 2.0

I don’t know why they kept it, or at least didn’t nerf it’s ability. But I think it won’t be staying at 3pts for very long. IMHO 8pts is more like it.

Why Not 4? 4 with proton tsim and barrage fits...

3 hours ago, Cloaker said:

4  Skulls

I don’t think a list composed entirely of high agility, no shields ships is ever going to do well against bombs. Particularly proton bombs with their critical damage. Perhaps FFG designed 2.0 bombs to counter that sort of ship and allow ships like the Punisher back into the game?

I actually think 4 skulls would be perfect to fight that list. You out pilot skill them so you can dodge arcs, you can link into focus, and you have the ability to close range to proc concordian. I would of needed to see how you played it, but I do believe that it's very beatable with your list.

Yeah, tragedy stimulator is an NPE and needs to be "BSF only".

6 hours ago, Hujoe Bigs said:

I actually think 4 skulls would be perfect to fight that list. You out pilot skill them so you can dodge arcs, you can link into focus, and you have the ability to close range to proc concordian. I would of needed to see how you played it, but I do believe that it's very beatable with your list.

Us at the tournament didn't think so. I've been playing nearly three years and have far more wins than losses. I specialize pretty well in these sorts of engagements. The stop after reveal Zero manuever, combined with medium base to get into range for protops, combined with 3 of them---I'm telling you brother, there was no approach vector. Fangs live for the Joust. Nope, can't do that with them as he just staggered formation to ensure range with the others and is getting blocks as well. Concordia was irrelevant with focus fire after the proton bombs hit. ( I avoided the seismics on the first engagement) Can't approach from flank as fragile aces get corralled to the side, having to not face the punishers, while praying you don't get hit with the protorps. It basically was either just run around perimeter in circles the whole game (zero fun) and hope you aren't within any range of their arc, or 1 turn in the corner over and over again, (again, boring.) It was my least favorite game 2.0 of x-wing in over 100 of them. Felt like 1.0 all over again. Initiative didn't matter. Chassis didn't matter. Maneuvers didn't matter. And most importantly, skill didn't matter. All he had to literally do was point his ships.Getting around to his back side was not happening.

I basically tried to get approach from 4 different directions. It was fruitless. The TS bomb spread guaranteed so much coverage two of the the fangs got caught with two different proton bombs before they even got to shoot. One was direct hit, the other fuel leak, and by the end of the turn both were gone.

TS should bring with it a weapons disabled token at least. It's such a stupid concept anyways, but thankfully Punishers are not in Hyperspace. Hard counter I guess to Fangs.

This looks like a tough match up for the skulls if the skull player wants to roll straight up in the punishers’ faces.

They have lower I and launch in the system phase so you have an opportunity to reposition. It is not an impossible approach, but one that would not be forgiving of missteps. Then again, if you were seeking forgiveness, you shouldn’t fly Fangs.

Honestly, I would think that their boost/TL torps would be a bigger problem overall.

15 minutes ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

This looks like a tough match up for the skulls if the skull player wants to roll straight up in the punishers’ faces.

They have lower I and launch in the system phase so you have an opportunity to reposition. It is not an impossible approach, but one that would not be forgiving of missteps. Then again, if you were seeking forgiveness, you shouldn’t fly Fangs.

Honestly, I would think that their boost/TL torps would be a bigger problem overall.

Yeah, that was certainly not my strategy. But eventually I got herded inbetween 3 arcs that closed in with no where to go. Ah well, Trajectory Simulator is here to stay, so if I'm going to play the game I need to accept it, which I do.

If anything, it does teach me that list diversity is sometimes more important than skill. So I need to ensure I'm more competitive in the list building phase. If I had brought my two init 3 Kimogilas / Skull /quad jumper this would have been a different story

I'm going to bring an analogy from MTG into this that I feel is very apt to the situation. When you play a game like this, you have to quickly figure out who is the control player and who is the aggro player. Every matchup boils down to this dynamic and in your case I think you really wanted to be aggro when you should have been playing control. When you can't joust with the fangs, just pretend you've got interceptors on the table and go from there. Splitting your forces is key here as they can only cover so much approach optimally so one element should be able to get in and do major damage while the other ships run.

2 minutes ago, Nyxen said:

I'm going to bring an analogy from MTG into this that I feel is very apt to the situation. When you play a game like this, you have to quickly figure out who is the control player and who is the aggro player. Every matchup boils down to this dynamic and in your case I think you really wanted to be aggro when you should have been playing control. When you can't joust with the fangs, just pretend you've got interceptors on the table and go from there. Splitting your forces is key here as they can only cover so much approach optimally so one element should be able to get in and do major damage while the other ships run.

Oh yes, usually pretty good at recognizing that! That was exactly what I did but I just ran out of space trying to dodge TS Proton bomb spread and range 2-3 torps / barrage rockets. By the time i got 2 free to start to go to work, 2 Skulls were already gone. The punisher having the zero and boost certainly made it a guessing game. Next time my strategy will be to stay at range 1 of all border edges, fan out and try to get them inside of a plus sign setup. But it sure is hard when nearly a fourth of the game state is covered with TS. Ah well. So it goes!

4 hours ago, Cloaker said:

Oh yes, usually pretty good at recognizing that! That was exactly what I did but I just ran out of space trying to dodge TS Proton bomb spread and range 2-3 torps / barrage rockets. By the time i got 2 free to start to go to work, 2 Skulls were already gone. The punisher having the zero and boost certainly made it a guessing game. Next time my strategy will be to stay at range 1 of all border edges, fan out and try to get them inside of a plus sign setup. But it sure is hard when nearly a fourth of the game state is covered with TS. Ah well. So it goes!

It is a very difficult approach to make and can easily be lost at setup. Good luck in your next engagement with them!

I have flown many punisher squads, a squad of low hp ships with no shields sat opposite is a dream, any squad where you spam a certain ship will have hard counters.

From multiple tournaments where I took a 3 punisher list and from many practice games I reckon 3 punisher lists like the one above will get about a 50% win rate, there will be some very good match ups, very bad and some close games, they are unlikely to make cuts as the emphasize the weaknesses by only having the same ship in the squad over and over. However your squad has the same issues just putting multiple fangs and nothing else.

When using spam squads you will always find those no win matches, you either need to make balanced squads or just accept that some match ups go for you and others against.

?

People really confuse me sometimes, maybe it's just the natural self preservation instinct kicking in or something but Tsims really aren't that big a deal.

Here's how you best them:

1.) Ensure you aren't flying in an easily targeted clump that'll be hit by multiple bombs in one turn

2.) JUST EAT A BOMB AND SLAY THE PUNISHER

I've seen some folks treat simulated bombs like frothing-at-the-mouth full on rabies rotweilers on rockets. They're ONE DAMAGE

Meanwhile, any half decent list should be able to concentrate firepower to one-round kill/horribly maim a punisher with minimal issue

To put it bluntly, there's a reason 3 tsim punishers arent competitive but proton Torp redline with imperial aces is

14 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

?

People really confuse me sometimes, maybe it's just the natural self preservation instinct kicking in or something but Tsims really aren't that big a deal.

Here's how you best them:

1.) Ensure you aren't flying in an easily targeted clump that'll be hit by multiple bombs in one turn

2.) JUST EAT A BOMB AND SLAY THE PUNISHER

I've seen some folks treat simulated bombs like frothing-at-the-mouth full on rabies rotweilers on rockets. They're ONE DAMAGE

Meanwhile, any half decent list should be able to concentrate firepower to one-round kill/horribly maim a punisher with minimal issue

To put it bluntly, there's a reason 3 tsim punishers arent competitive but proton Torp redline with imperial aces is

Well, in my game it was more than one damage. Their fan of arcs effect with probomb, barrage covered enough ground to where the TS probomb fuel leaked on one (followed up by two barrage hits which destroyed the first Skull) and the direct hit on the other (which couldn't avoid the spread of three rear drop bombs afterwards, and got destroyed afterwards) and my 4 focused fangs doing a grand total of 6 damage to one punished in the engagement, yeah, eating a bomb isn't always the right solution. The medium bases staggered made them very tough to clear, there was no out once the fangs were in it. The Punishers still had another round of Seismics to drop as well even.

The issue with both bombs and ordnance might be in the charge count. they're priced at 1.0 type of costs but now typically it's two opportunities. It makes things alot more forgiving. I do like the utility that extra charges give ships, both in future design space and combative viability, but the prices might need some uptick. Protorps would still get taken at 11 points. Sesimics would still be viable at 5. Etc etc.

Sounds like a bad list/engagement/matchup

Four fangs should have no issue with killing A punisher, esp if they're doing the whole fang range 1 thing

Fearless is a great talent

It sounds like you lost so you want the list that beat you nerfed.

40 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Sounds like a bad list/engagement/matchup

Four fangs should have no issue with killing A punisher, esp if they're doing the whole fang range 1 thing

Fearless is a great talent

Agreed, definitely. It was a No Glory format...each of the skulls was 50 points. Was basically using the tourney as practice to git gud

Spam lists are usually feast or famine. Bad for enjoyment of the game long term. I should know better! More options means more opportunity.